Cynthia said: "They've had a quarrel. Oh, what is it—what could it be, Jack? You know it will break her heart. It's breaking mine now. I can't bear it—I simply can't——"
"Haven't the least idea what's wrong," said Cairns, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, and beating the hearth with his walking stick.
"Can't Mr. Desboro come here pretty soon?"
"Oh, yes, I think so. I'll go back and look him over——"
Cynthia's eyes suddenly glistened with tears, and she bowed her head.
"My dear child," expostulated Cairns, "it's nothing to weep over. It's a—one of those things likely to happen to any man——"
"But I can't bear to have it happen to Jacqueline's husband. Oh, I wish she had never seen him, never heard of him! He is a thousand, thousand miles beneath her. He isn't worth——"
"For heaven's sake, Cynthia, don't think that!"
"Think it! I know it! Of what value is that sort of man compared to a girl like Jacqueline! Of what use is that sort of man anyway! I know them," she said bitterly, "I've had my lesson in that school. One and all, young and old, rich or poor—comparatively poor—they are the same. The same ideas haunt their idle and selfish minds, the same motives move them, the same impulses rule them, and they reason with their emotions, not with their brains. Arrogant, insolent, condescending, self-centred, self-indulgent, and utterly predatory! That is the type! And they belong where people prey upon one another, not among the clean and sweet and innocent. They belong where there is no question of marriage or of home or of duty; they belong where lights are many and brilliant, where there is money, and plenty of it! Where there is noise, and too much of it! That is where that sort of man belongs. And nobody knows it as well as such a girl as I! Nobody, nobody!" Her lip quivered and she choked back the tears.
"And—and now—such a man has taken my little friend—my little girl—Jacqueline——"